


Fireworks

by battle_cat



Category: Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Ficlet, Fireworks, Gen, New Year's Eve, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-02
Updated: 2019-01-02
Packaged: 2019-10-02 13:58:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17265449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/battle_cat/pseuds/battle_cat
Summary: New Year's Eve: now more complicated than expected.





	Fireworks

**Author's Note:**

> Because I couldn't stop thinking about [this wonderful/terrible fanart.](http://aiwa-sensei.tumblr.com/post/181578978255/happy-new-year-parties-and-fireworks-are-fun-but)

He used to love fireworks.

He still has vivid memories of being a kid, eight, maybe nine, the year his uncle had smuggled him and his cousins up to the roof of that shady warehouse where he was working in Weehawken, an utterly unremarkable waterfront building that happened to be dead across from where they parked the fireworks barge in the middle of the Hudson River. 

The fireworks were for New York City, the jeweled spires glittering across the water far enough away they might have been another planet. They were not for Weehawken, New Jersey, which made stealing the view even more fun.

From the frigid roof of the grungy warehouse the explosions were enormous, red and green and white and gold bursting right on top of them and filling the whole sky. Each detonation was loud enough to feel like a punch in the chest, and he loved it, loved it the way he would later love a loud show or a crowded club, the music pulsing so hard you could forget your own heartbeat.

He was stupid to think it would still be like that this year.

**noooo don’t like that eddie**

Venom whines after the first big explosion, and shit, fuck, he should have _known,_ how could he have been so _stupid_ not to think of this--

BOOM

He can feel Venom shudder and writhe inside him, radiating discomfort, and goddammit, he was such a fucking idiot--

“V, I’m sorry, I didn’t think--we can go somewhere--underground maybe, somewhere away from the sounds--” He’d already decided they were staying in tonight, but maybe the nearest MUNI station would be deep enough that they could ride it out--

**NO**

**stay here**

**safe here**

There’s a trio of explosions in quick succession. Venom curls into a tight little ball somewhere around his solar plexus, and Eddie doesn’t know what to do, so he climbs onto the couch and curls himself into a ball too, knees drawn up against his chest as the fireworks show somewhere outside his window starts up in earnest.

Every boom makes him startle and Venom twist inside him. He can’t really tell if the tightness in his chest is Venom wrapping itself around him from the inside, or if it’s one of those sudden walls of anxiety that sometimes hit him out of nowhere, especially lately, it seems.

Sometimes Venom can help with those. Not tonight, it seems. There’s nothing to do but sit on the couch and hold both of them tightly until it ends.

Every once in a while someone below will set off a bottle rocket, and those _hurt._ The sharp shriek as it goes up is like being shoved face-first into a wall of knives. But the big, deep explosions of the fireworks going off over the bay--he _knows_ those are not the frequencies that hurt Venom, they’re far too low--

**not hurt**

Venom mumbles at a quarter of its normal volume. And then, even quieter:

**scared**

“Oh.” Maybe that’s why he’s so full of adrenaline and cortisol his face feels numb. “It’s far away,” he tries, absentmindedly rubbing the spot on his torso where it feels like Venom is concentrated right now. “Can’t hurt us in here.”

**reminds us of bad things**

**don’t like it**

“Oh...V...it’s okay. You’re safe here. We’re safe here,” he mumbles, holding himself and his symbiote tighter and trying not to hear the pop of gunshots and the roar of igniting rocket fuel in the bursts of light and color in the sky.

He mostly tries not to think about how, in the middle of discovering aliens were real, one was living inside his body, and the rest of its species was intent on eating his planet, he’d also been shot at, kidnapped, been in a motorcycle crash that should have been fatal, nearly been executed at point-blank range, and survived being impaled by a piece of alien and falling through exploding rocket fuel. He tries even harder not to think of the dim flashes of other memories he gets every once in a while. Being trapped in a glass coffin, nowhere to move, nothing to touch, so desperately hungry it felt like going insane. Falling and burning and _burning_ until he couldn’t think of anything else but pain--

A little swell of quivering black goo pushes up under where his hand is pressed against his own chest. V’s face is there, looking more miserable than you’d think a shit-talking carnivorous nine-foot-tall alien could look.

“It’s okay,” he mutters again, although it feels futile. He digs his fingers into the goo and feels tiny wisps of it curl around his fingers in return.

He’s shaking. They’re both shaking. He’s not really sure whose fear is roaring through their nervous system, if it’s V’s or his or if they can even be distinguished at this point. They’re a feedback loop, and some of the time it is _awesome,_ but right now it sucks.

“It’s okay.” The explosions outside are reaching their frenetic conclusion, red and gold and green highlighting the edges of his darkened apartment. The worst will be over soon. “It’s okay,” he whispers. “You’re safe here,” he whispers, and holds tightly to the shivering black goo pooled against his chest, and waits.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on [Tumblr.](http://fuckyeahisawthat.tumblr.com/post/181628457045/aiwa-sensei-happy-new-year-parties-and)


End file.
